A descent such as this into a world without mercy is both brutally and skillfully told, predatory violence is the evil that lurks between the chapters. The reader can see from the outset that there would never be a happy ending to this story. The protagonist Otis Tilson, a man struggling with his own sexuality narrates his adventures and his own transformation into drag queen Sally. They become trapped within a desolate existence, surrounded by racism, drugs, prostitution, violence and police brutality. They find only the degradation of the ghettos in the 1930s Chicago slums. They pack up their bags to leave behind the whipping for streets paved with gold. The novel follows the Tilson clan, a family of sharecroppers living on a plantation in Mississippi. Mama Black Widow drags the hidden undertow of homosexuality into the daylight of the late sixties. By contrast Last Exit To Brooklyn (Hubert Selby Jr.) can appear as a Mills And Boon fantasy and tame by comparison. It is certainly the pinnacle of Beck’s work, but also the one that garnished him the most interest, and, controversy. This work is, in my view, one of the most intense fictional stories put to paper by any author. The tale of Otis Tilson is told, a story planted within the hell of ghetto life in Mama Black Widow (1969). Whereas his last two works hinged on tales of prostitution-enforcement and racism, now he turned his attention to the homesexual community. Nothing, however, prepared the world for his next boundary defying leap. The art dragged from the sewer becomes more pronounced in 1972, as Trick Baby hit the silver screen as we entered into the era of Blaxploitation classics.īeck’s first two published novels dragged you into his gritty past existence, holding it up in front of the reader and asking the same reader to make judgements on the right or wrong of the behaviour.

However, the backdrop of rawness makes this essential reading. This, of course, leads to a life of hustling and crime, though the character of Johnny ( White Folks) is one who is likeable, and at times even warming.

The character of Johnny is caught between both worlds of colour, accepted by neither and rejected by both. At the same time the aspects of racism are pronounced with a subtlety that is, at times, overpowering. Johnny’s mother goes on to raise him on her own, but descends into mental illness. She marries Johnny’s father, an Irish man and a drunk who soon left after getting pressure from his family. Trick Baby centers on Johnny’s black mother, a woman who had no regard for black men. Born to a mixed race couple, a man who could pass as being of either white or black. The novel follows a man, Johnny O’ Brien, nicknamed White Folks. Here, Robert Beck, once more, takes the reader onto the streets of Southside Chicago. Where Pimp gave you a peek into the world of crime, Slim’s follow-up, Trick Baby (again 1967), launched a very personal attack on the American mindset of the day. The account of my brutality and cunning as a pimp will fill many of you with revulsion, however, if one intelligent, valuable young man or woman can be saved from the destructive slime then the displeasure I have given will have been outweighed by that individual’s use of his potential in a socially constructive manner. I will lay bare my life and thoughts as a pimp. In this book I will take you, the reader, with me into the secret inner world of the pimp. In all, Pimp is delivered with the Shakespeare from the ghetto approach, a literary work that is both genius and subversive. Of course, with two ingrained traits which Beck cannot separate himself from, one is not to squeal on any of his acquaintances, the second changing names to protect the people he knew. A submergence into the sex trade with Iceberg Slim as your guide. Every word was dragged from the well-worked Chicago streets and served up without any filter to its audience. The influence of his first masterpiece was not the typical African-American work, it was more desolate of hope, staring directly into the abyss of underworld culture. Of course being a creature from the undercurrent of society, both led to, and inspired Robert Beck’s first great work, the semi-autobiographical Pimp (1967). All those sentences describe perfectly the prowess of the late Iceberg Slim, Robert Beck (Aug– April 30, 1992). The other, the illegal sale of the female form, an enforcer, the emotionless beings chasing the American dream. One of which includes works of artistic genius, blended with a social commentary, and revolutionary ideals. In fact, it is two ends of a very different spectrum. Putting the words together, literary genius and former pimp does not seem like a practical simile. One of the most influential writers of our age.

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